Val Mcdermid - Blue Genes

And then there was Helen Maitland.

The hardest part had been getting Tony Tambo to play. Briefing me was as far as he had wanted to go. Tony and his friends didn’t mind pitting me against DI Lovell and his thugs, but they drew the line at taking too many risks themselves. I knew there was no point in simply phoning him and asking him to cooperate in a sting. What I needed was a pressure point. That’s why I’d taken a trip to a certain Italian espresso bar before I’d gone to Bradford.

Every morning between eleven and twelve, Collar di Salvo sits in a booth at the rear of Carpaccio, just round the corner from the Crown Court building. Collar likes to think of himself as the Godfather of Manchester. In reality, the old man’s probably got closer links to the media than the Mafia. Even though he was born in the old Tripe Colony in Miles Platting, Collar affects an Italian accent. He has legitimate businesses, but his real income comes from the wrong side of the law. Nothing heavy duty for Collar; a bit of what Manchester calls taxing and other, less subtle, cities call protection rackets; counterfeit leisurewear, mock auctions and ringing stolen cars are what keeps Mrs di Salvo in genuine Cartier jewellery and Marina Rinaldi clothes. And definitely no drugs.

The story goes that Collar got his nickname from his method of persuading rival taxation teams to find another way of earning a living. He’d put a dog collar round their neck, attach a leash to it and loop the leash over an over head beam in his warehouse. Then a couple of his strong-arm boys would take the dog for a walk…History tells us that the competition took up alternative occupations in droves.

In recent years, with the rise of the drug lords, Collar’s style of management and range of crimes has started to look like pretty small potatoes. But his is still a name that provokes second thoughts for anybody on the fringes of legality in Manchester. Given that young Joey, the heir apparent, was supposedly involved in the flyposting business, Collar seemed the obvious person to talk to. We’d never met and we owed each other no favours; but equally, I couldn’t think of any reason why Collar wouldn’t listen.

I walked confidently down the coffee bar and stopped opposite the old man’s booth. ‘I’d like to buy you a coffee, Mr di Salvo,’ I said. He likes everyone around him to act like they’re in a movie. It made me feel like an idiot, but that’s not an unusual sensation in this job.

His large head was like the ruin of one of those Roman busts you see in museums, right down to the broken nose. Dark, liquid eyes like a spaniel with conjunctivitis looked me up and down. ‘Is-a my pleasure, Signorina Brannigan,’ he said with a stately nod. That he knew who I was simply confirmed everything I’d ever heard about him. The thug sitting opposite him slid out of the booth and moved to a table a few feet away.

I sat down. ‘Life treating you well?’

He shrugged like he was auditioning for Scorsese. ‘Apart from the tax man and the VAT man, I have no complaints.’

‘The family well?’

‘Cosi, cosa.’

Two double espressos arrived on the table, one in front of each of us. Never mind that I’d really wanted a cappuccino and a chunk of panettone. Fuelled by this much caffeine, I’d be flying to Bradford. ‘The matter I wanted to discuss with you concerns Joey,’ I said, reaching for the sugar bowl to compound the felony.

His head tilted to one side, revealing a fold of wrinkled chicken skin between his silk cravat and his shirt collar. ‘Go on,’ he said softly.

Joey was Collar’s grandson and the apple of his beady eye. His father Marco had died in a high-speed car chase a dozen years ago. Now Joey was twenty, trying and failing to live up to the old man’s expectations. The trouble with Joey was that temperamentally he took after his mother, a gentle Irish woman who had never quite recovered from the shock of discovering that the man she had agreed to marry was a gangster rather than a respectable second-hand car salesman. Joey had none of the di Salvo ruthlessness and all the Costello kindness. He was never going to make it as a villain, but his grandfather would have to be six feet under before Joey got the chance to find out what his real métier was. Until then, Collar was going to be faced with people like me bringing him the bad news.

‘His flyposting business is suffering. I won’t insult your intelligence by outlining the problem. I’m sure you know all about Detective Inspector Lovell. I’m sure you also know that conventional means of dealing with the problem are proving ineffective because of Lovell’s access to law enforcement. Joey’s difficulty happens to coincide with that of my client, and I’m offering to provide a solution that will make this whole thing go away.’ I stopped talking and took a sip of the lethal brew in my cup. My mouth felt sulphurous and dark, like the pits of hell.

‘Very commendable,’ he said, one liver-spotted hand reaching inside his jacket and emerging with a cigar that could have done service as a pit prop, always supposing there were any pits left.

‘I need your help to make it work,’ I continued as he chopped the end off his cigar and sucked indecently on it. ‘I need Tony Tambo’s cooperation, and I don’t have sufficient powers of persuasion to secure it.’

‘And you hope’—puff—‘that in exchange’—puff—‘for you getting Joey off the hook’—puff—‘I will persuade Tony to help?’

‘That’s exactly right, Mr di Salvo.’

‘Why you want Tambo?’

‘DI Lovell has been keeping a low profile. Not a lot of people know he’s behind these attempts to take over the turf. But Tony’s already had a face-to-face with him, so the man’s got nothing to lose by coming in to a meeting. All Tony has to do is set it up. I’ll do the rest. It’s my head on the block, nobody else’s.’

Collar nodded. He closed his eyes momentarily. That didn’t stop him abusing my air space with his cigar. His eyes opened and he stared into mine. Any more ham and he could have opened a deli counter. ‘You got it,’ he said. ‘Unless you hear otherwise, the meet will be at Tambo’s club, half past eight, tonight. OK?’

‘OK.’ I didn’t want to ask how he was going to get it sorted that fast. To be honest, I didn’t want to know. I stood up and was about to thank him when he said menacingly, ‘You don’t like your coffee?’

I’d had enough of playing games. ‘It looks like sump oil and tastes worse,’ I said.

I thought he was going to bite the end off his cigar. Then he smiled, like a python who finds a dancing mouse too entertaining to eat. I paid for both coffees on the way out, though. I’m not that daft.

Eight o’clock and Della Prentice had her hand down the front of my most audacious underwired bra. We were in an interview room at Bootle Street nick, and Della was making sure the radio mike was firmly anchored to the infrastructure of my cleavage. If Lovell paid the kind of attention to breasts that most Vice cops are prone to, I didn’t want anything showing that shouldn’t be. Nipples were one thing, radio mikes another altogether.

‘Right,’ said Della. ‘He’s not going to spot that unless things get rather more out of hand than we’re anticipating.’ She stepped back and gave me the once-over. I’d gone for a shiny gun-metal lycra leotard over black leggings and the black hockey boots I normally reserved for a bit of cat burglary. Draped over the leotard was an old denim jacket with slashed sleeves that revealed the temporary tattoos I’d got stencilled on both biceps. The makeup aimed for the recovering-junkie look; the hair was gelled into a glossy helmet. ‘Very tasteful,’ she commented.